Shaken Faith
by Vanir24
Summary: Sam speeds down the road to take an injured Dean for medical assistance. Reflects on his beliefs along the way. Yeah I cant really summarise it...its not very long to begin with!


**Shaken Faith**

The night was bruised. No streetlights to light the way. The air was crisp but silent. The day's warm hand had been withdrawn with the setting of the sun. There were no other cars along the Interstate 80. No other travellers. No other souls.

Sam Winchester sat in the driver's seat of the 1967 Chevrolet Impala, grateful for the lack of drivers on the I-80. The impala's speedometer shrieked 200km/h.

"Thank god for no traffic," Sam muttered to no one in particular.

He was glad that there was no one he would have to swerve around, his brother's life depended on Sam getting him to a hospital as soon as possible. In their line of work injury was as certain as the sun rising. Dean was slumped, unconscious on the back seat, the legato gasps of his breathing echoed throughout the car, his blood trickling from open wounds.

With Dean in his near comatose state, Sam was left to his own troubled thoughts as they wandered to his religious beliefs and wavering faith. Sam had been raised as a Christian; he prayed everyday, like clockwork, for forgiveness and deliverance, like most normal people. Tonight, he had lost his faith completely. He was lost in the black abyss of confusion that was his mind. How could there be a God if the evil he saw now threatened to tear apart his already broken family?

Dean groaned bringing Sam's mind crashing back to reality. Sam looked at his brother's, battered and broken figure and saw the blood starting to pool on the beige leather seat…Sam flattened the accelerator.

_Sam stood by the pool edge looking at his reflection in the crystalline surface of the water. He bent over the cracked concrete edge and met the ice water with a splash. He flailed in the crushing cold but was engulfed sinking to the bottom, panic filling every fibre of his body. Sitting on the tiled pool floor Sam looked up, the sun was obscured by the glassy surface that he could not reach. Suddenly in a whirlpool of action, an arm wrapped around his torso in a vice grip. _

_Air reached Sam's lungs and he gulped gratefully. He floated there on the surface in the arms of his big brother._

"_Dean! Want to teach me how to swim?"_

_Breathing heavily, Dean looked down at his baby brother._

"_Yeah Sammy…I'll teach you how to swim."_

Sam snapped out of his reverie to see an illuminated crimson cross, global sign for hospital. The Impala screeched to a halt in front of the emergency department. Sam leapt from the car; he ripped the back door open and grabbed the limp form of his brother, throwing Dean over his shoulder as though he were nothing more than a duffel bag. Adrenaline coursing through his veins he ran into the emergency room, Dean's blood, being soaking into his porous shirt.

"HELP!"

The startled hospital staff quickly bustled into action. A gurney appeared and the doctors swarmed.

Sam stood back from the fray, praying that his brother was okay. There was that word again 'pray,' he was unsure of the existence of God, yet he still prayed to some unknown being. A short Caucasian nurse approached and began her interrogation,

"What happened?"

Sam's mind snapped to Family rule number one…"Never tell the truth about what we do."

"Uh…a bear," Sam replied hoping his hesitance wouldn't attract any suspicion.

The nurse began to formulate a reply, but was suddenly pointing at Sam's leg.

"You're bleeding too!"

Sam looked down to see bloodstains and a large slash in his jeans. The nurse grabbed Sam's bloodied collar and pulled him into a sitting position on a nearby bed to examine him.

"Hmmm, it won't need stitches but I'll fetch some bandages and antiseptic to prevent infection," she told Sam.

Sam sat and awaited the nurse's return, desperately wanting to know Dean's condition, but not wanting to incur the wrath of the hospital staff, he stayed put…stewing in the frantic madness that was his mind. He slipped into an exhausted sleep, his dreams rampant with images of life without his brother.

Sam awoke from his exhaustion, dried tears caking his cheek, bandages covering his leg and his head somehow had managed to find its way to a pillow. He looked at his watch an hour had passed! He jumped from the bed, and ran toward the nurses' station and found, the same nurse from before sat behind the desk.

"How's my brother? Where is he?"

The nurse looked a little cautious before answering, choosing her words wisely.

"He's in recovery, the doctors had to operate to repair some internal damage."

The nurse directed Sam to the recovery ward, where he waited for a doctor to brief him on the situation. A cyan-clad surgeon emerged from the ward seconds later and strode toward Sam.

"Dean Winchester's brother I presume?"

Sam nodded, looking up to the doctor's face with hopeful eyes.

"Your brother is in a critical but stable condition," the doctor reported.

"Critical but stable?" Sam queried.

"It means his life signs are normal but his injuries have led to him slipping into a coma…one that I don't know if he'll wake up from."

This news slapped Sam. How could his brother, the strongest person he's ever known be taken down by internal injuries?

"That settles it," Sam thought to himself, "there is no God. How can there be when terrible things like this happen to good people?"

Sam sat at his brother's bedside, staring at his brother's bedridden figure. So many memories of their journeys together flooded Sam's mind. They had come so far together, done so much good in this world, why would Dean be taken away from him when they could continue to make the world safer?

As Sam sat lost in his own thoughts, his brother's eyelids fluttered and his fingers twitched.

Sam rushed to the bedside.

"Thank God," Sam breathed as his brother slowly clawed his way back to reality.


End file.
